"...It was prob’ly just the way he started leaning at me away from the lamp, but his face was totally darker now. "You leave me no choice.”
“Should I worry?”
“You should be worried. Now you’ll have no chance to work on your already failing grades.”
I did this sort of gasp, clutching my shirt and everything like I was stabbed. “Oh! Woe is me! I wont’ be able to work on my grades! Oh, ‘tis a fate worse than death!” The principal actually stood up then, and I kinda’ sat back. You know, he’d never done that before, ever. “Hey, you should be glad I’m really learning something in drama class.”..."
I've finally drafted Chapter 1 of this book. The reason it's such a 'finally' is because I plotted the thing out towards the end of summer last year. Summer's almost back around! Just goes to show how little I get done during the school year. All the same, I did a major revision of The Federation Wars, all three books, so maybe things aren't as slow as they seem.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Moving Forward
Last summer, I'd planned to start on a whole new book, and make some real progress over the summer. I'm just now starting it. But at least I have good reasons.
What I did instead is, over the last year, revise the whole Federation Wars trilogy. It even has a new name-AWOL Soul trilogy. The new title gets mixed results from people I show it to, but it's more of an attention-grabber than the last one.
A lot of changes were in the second two books. A whole swath was cut out of book 2 and replaced to give it more tension, and I changed a few characters in bk3- a pair of commanders were demoted to lieutenants and squished together into one character. I really feel like the new guy has much more emotional weight, so, good.
But I'm finally done. When I first set out to write these books, waaay back when I was something like eleven, I found it incredible that I'd finally found the commitment and skills to write my own story at all. Now, at the end of it all, things have changed. I'm proud of 'em, but I'm done with them now. If they're good enough to sell, they'll most likely sell as they are.
So what now? I wrote a short story with a quirky idea, and found it so bad it was only good to- as my good freind Twain put it- "tar and pitch". Once I learn from it what I can, the file's getting deleted and the paper recycled. You know, to save the planet. So I get to start on my book! I've already mentioned it once or twice-as soon as I finish a chapter, I'll post a couple paragraphs up here so everybody can see. This new main character is a lot different from Rand Morgan. Rand's mature and serious and driven by empathy. The kid at the heart of my new project is-at least first off-a disrespectful, lower-class, snarky thing of a twelve-year old. But I'm young enough to remember what middle school is like, and any twelve-year old readers should have no trouble understanding his life.
What I did instead is, over the last year, revise the whole Federation Wars trilogy. It even has a new name-AWOL Soul trilogy. The new title gets mixed results from people I show it to, but it's more of an attention-grabber than the last one.
A lot of changes were in the second two books. A whole swath was cut out of book 2 and replaced to give it more tension, and I changed a few characters in bk3- a pair of commanders were demoted to lieutenants and squished together into one character. I really feel like the new guy has much more emotional weight, so, good.
But I'm finally done. When I first set out to write these books, waaay back when I was something like eleven, I found it incredible that I'd finally found the commitment and skills to write my own story at all. Now, at the end of it all, things have changed. I'm proud of 'em, but I'm done with them now. If they're good enough to sell, they'll most likely sell as they are.
So what now? I wrote a short story with a quirky idea, and found it so bad it was only good to- as my good freind Twain put it- "tar and pitch". Once I learn from it what I can, the file's getting deleted and the paper recycled. You know, to save the planet. So I get to start on my book! I've already mentioned it once or twice-as soon as I finish a chapter, I'll post a couple paragraphs up here so everybody can see. This new main character is a lot different from Rand Morgan. Rand's mature and serious and driven by empathy. The kid at the heart of my new project is-at least first off-a disrespectful, lower-class, snarky thing of a twelve-year old. But I'm young enough to remember what middle school is like, and any twelve-year old readers should have no trouble understanding his life.
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